iPhone Apps And Simple Success
It may be a race to the bottom for software developers, but has proven to be a winner for customers. Apple has created a completely new market which has resonated in spite of the obvious drawbacks. The simplest lesson in all of this is simplicity itself.
The iPhone and its wannabes have proven many things, one being the ready acceptance of information appliances, in this case consisting of focused functionality housed in a sleek physical package, without installation hassles, requiring no user manuals, soft automatic updates and instant on. But perhaps the most important aspect of this is the amazing ease of use.
The iPhone and its like don’t have the horsepower of typical desktops/laptops, but the user interface beats most ‘regular’ applications for intuitiveness and concentrated functionality, wrapped in creative presentations.
The small screen certainly makes the colors more vivid, and the lack of a standard keyboard hasn’t crimped these apps’ appeals. Letting the fingers do the ‘talking’ accomplished much more than merely eliminating an external pointing device; it involves the customer very directly and personally.
So far there are few line of business applications, and probably won’t be until some real security issues are taken care of, which will happen sooner or later. The small screen is not adequate for today’s knowledge work, which still requires ocean wide grids and spreadsheets. But this too will change, as the nature of work it changes, taking advantage of possibilities as they become recognized and exploited.
Desktop/laptop applications will not disappear, just as mainframes haven’t, in spite of all the predictions of imminent demise. In fact, the design of these ‘larger’ applications can take some pointers from the simplicity, presentation creativity and ease of use of the iPhone and wannabe apps themselves.
These are exciting times, with opportunities being created all around us, most with characteristics that can be profitable applied to both existing and new knowledge and connection devices.
© Copyright 2010 Chuck Brooks for FutureWare SCG
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